Must California employers pay double on holidays?

November 28, 2014

A bill soon to be introduced to the California legislature would require employers to pay double to those who work on Thanksgiving and Christmas in an attempt to curtail transforming the family holidays into shopping bonanzas. [Union Tribune]

Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego announced her plan to introduce the bill, which would affect retailers and restaurants. She says she settled on the policy proposal in lieu of seeking an outright ban on stores opening on the holidays.

“I’ve watched how the retailers and restaurateurs continue to expand their hours and open up on these holidays that are traditionally family holidays,” Gonzales said. “What people are being called in to do now is a real slap in the face of family values, frankly.”

Gonzalez indicated the bill would not apply to police departments, hospitals and other indispensable services.

“This is not life and death,” Gonzalez said. “This is consumerism.”

A spokesperson for Wal-Mart said the retailer stays open on Thanksgiving and closes its stores on Christmas. Wal-Mart employees who work on Thanksgiving essentially receive double pay already, said spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan.

In 2013, Gonzales successfully pushed through legislation guaranteeing California workers up to three days a year of paid sick leave.

21 Comments

Let’s have the dems pressure Calif. businesses with one more turn of the thumb screws and drive them out of the state! That will teach them a lesson about being greedy by making money off of the people! Let’s force everyone to do their shopping on the internet instead! Business is evil in California! The more regulation, the better! They don’t own their businesses, we do!!!!

Why stop at Christmas and thanksgiving. Let’s just pay double all year long! Let’s mandate paid days off for your birthday! I. Think we should be given 4 hours off to vote, if you vote democratic and if not, then you must work. Let’s make it illegal to open a business on Sunday.As in the words of Michael Brown’s step father when no indictment…let’s burn this bitch down!

what happened to free will. I chose not to shop and stay home with my family. If others chose to take this holiday to save some money on gifts for their family then hope so be it. Each to their own. We do not need the Government to control how retail business is conducted, or what days, hours business should be open.
If Walmart was UNION everything would be OK the Government would not want to step on their toes….

I had no idea tryptophan could create such a cognitively distorted groupthink agenda. I will stick with Facebook today….they are more cohesive-in that they have gone through the cycle and their tryptophan has gone past the blood brain barrier to form serotonin. They are mellow and happy. That is where I like to be on long weekends.

Why on one hand are municipalities racing to wipe our nation free from Christmas but still want to dictate that higher wages must be paid on Christmas?
Isn’t this a mixing of church and state that big brother constantly wales against?
It’s about power and control and nothing more.

Of Course the Population in California needs the nanny State to take care of them…those evil businesses are just screwing them for profit. I say Tax all the evil business owners 90%! That will stop their rape of the 99%….

This is one of the best posts I have seen on this site! When we need the government telling us to do the “right thing” (in this case, reimbursing people with extra wages because we took them away from their family holiday to deal with insane consumers) then we are truly lost as a human race.

Find me one politician, who is in office, to better mankind. Every election without fail politicians from all sides throw the words “small business” into debates as part of their platform to save America. Once in office they become deaf and blind to the plight of small business, then find ways to tax and micro – regulate small business to the point of extinction. Small business is becoming a thing of the past. While Corporations have no problem adapting to financially motivated political regulations, they are the burial of Small Business. Bottom line, this does nothing good, just like our regulators.

Gee, I don’t know. I wasn’t out shopping Black Friday or other holidays, I was working those holidays. Having worked retail for years and years, I would have appreciated the double-time pay. I’d like to have been home with my family but if I wanted to keep my job I had to go to work. It is easy to say “don’t work that job,” if you have choices and there are lots of other jobs out there for the taking…..but when there aren’t… well, until you have worked those retail jobs yourself on holidays, maybe you don’t know what it feels like. Please don’t try to speak for me.

Wasn’t speaking for you, I was speaking for me. I’ve worked a Thanksgiving and a Easter holiday. Many Memorial and Labor days, a few fourth of July’s etc. Life goes on. I live my life and my life with family 365 days a year not a few. There were many another weekend or time to make up. I didn’t go and demand my employer do this or that, or complain about it. Do you realize that at one point a lot of people in this country use to work six days a week and take off the seventh. There wasn’t many of the holidays we have today. Are you getting paid for working? If not then I’m with ya, but NO your employer is paying you.

As for working elsewhere? I have dug, ditches, cleaned toilets, mopped floors, thrown papers, done sales and many another job to the point where I am today. We live in the BEST country in the world for opportunities. You don’t have to be educated. There are good blue collar paying jobs but GOD FORBID a lot of people don’t want to sweat or get their hands dirty. Oh also they may not like the blue collar jobs either as they do require overtime and working some holidays.

I didn’t demand anything either or complain, no point in that. I cleaned apartments, which included toilets, floors, windows and refrigerators but made more money doing that than working retail at minimum wage. I worked six days a week too, plus two other part time jobs when I wasn’t doing that.

So, were you minimum wage too? Was EVERY holiday spent at work? How many years did you do that?

Children used to work six days a week, but was it right?

No one is saying this isn’t the best country in the world, but it is not perfect either. Those who don’t want to sweat or get their hands dirty open up all those kinds of jobs for immigrants, right?

Victim mentality. You are no better than someone who refuses to do work like that and decided upon a professional career, went to college, and then took a job that has many nice benefits and perks (including all holidays off). We all make our choices. But when we make them and then declare we are better than others because of the fact we do work for employers that exploit us (along with the screen name “been there done that”)…..issues…..just sayin….

I was going to college when this was going on. I didn’t refuse the work, I had the brains and gumption to want to change where I was after I saw there was no way to advance. I had the same job when I got out of college. Later I got a better one, but you don’t forget the 15 years it took to get there. I’m not saying I’m better than others, I am one of many who took this route. How is wanting to be compensated for doing something extra, which working a holiday is, acting like you are “better than others?”

Really, this whole complaint is looking at one side only, the business owner. And clearly, these comments just seem to be railing against guv’ment regulations. If business owners valued their employees, this would already be happening without the guv’ment stepping in. Many do already.

Please indigo 1955, give us your background. I think maybe you never had a job you had to keep despite the working conditions. My guess is that you haven’t been there.

Ah Gov. trying to legislate business AGAIN. Why not legislate the people buying? Or legislate who can go shopping when and where? If you have NEVER stood in a line or NEVER went out on Black Friday even once, then please respond otherwise……………

If you don’t like, then don’t go out shopping and support. If you don’t like the fact that you might have to work on Thanksgiving, then don’t work that job.

There were people in the Military working yesterday to protect our country, I didn’t hear them whine.

There was Dr., Nurses and Police working yesterday to put those who might have got injured in the festivities, back together and or to protect them. I didn’t hear them whine.

WHAT is it that everyone whines about everything Walmart? The store is to big, they don’t pay enough, I don’t like where they build. THEN STAY THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!! Don’t support them.

Sorry folks I thought this was America. We decide what business stays open in how we support them. SOMEONE must be supporting Walmart, Kohls et al?

Here is the funny part, we all bitch and whine about small business and wanting them to be successful. Has anyone seen the original Walmart 5 and dime? ONE STORE is where Walmart started from. That is the same store everyone is bitching about when they talk about the little guy. He was successful like everyone SAYS they want and then when he got real big, we all complain. We have turned into a nation of, nothing is never good enough, We build people and institutions up and then when they are successful? We go the other direction and tear them down. We do this each and every day. I find that as much evil as that of what people are accusing these places of.

I respected Sam Walton and what he did to grow Walmart into a big company. However, his descendents have gone too far in the way they conduct business.

They led the charge to off-shore American manufacturing so that they could cut costs. Blue-collar workers be damned — let them settle for lower priced goods at Walmart with their unemployment & welfare checks instead of decent paying jobs. This was not only Walmart’s fault because the Republican congress (with Democrat help) passed a bunch of “free trade” agreements which gave China and many other foreign countries unfair advantages back during the Clinton presidency. They opened the door and Walmart was among the first to charge through. In fairness, if they hadn’t jumped at the chance, they may have lost market share to others who did too. I just wonder who was paying off the politicians to do this.

Then there are some other business practices which, while not illegal, are unethical in my eyes. One is their practice of getting manufacturers of new products to go way into debt to scale up their production to meet Walmart’s needs — often with a contract giving Walmart exclusive rights. Walmart then tells them that they need to cut costs more and strongly “suggests” that they do it by moving production offshore. The manufacturer can’t make a profit selling products made in the USA at the price Walmart demands and has too much debt to survive without the sales.

Another is a practice of going into relatively small communities and undercutting local competing businesses with “loss-leader” prices until the local business folds and then Walmart raises their prices to a level that brings them profits. I have heard that this is no longer as common a practice as it was 20 years ago so it may not be as much of an issue as it was previously.

Finally, there is the issue of bribing local politicians (or conning them with unrealistic promises) to get favorable deals on development costs when they build new stores. (Atascadero?)

I recall being in a Kentucky town maybe 20 years ago, Glasgow. A 24-hr a day Walmart had come in a few years back and it was humming. The town center had a grassy square in the middle and businesses on all four sides around it. Except there was only one or two still left open, the others had closed. I hope that turned around.

Funny I remember the same thing but opposite of another town. Twenty years ago it rolled up it’s sidewalks by six on most weekends. You could park anywhere as half the buildings downtown where empty. There was one restaurant downtown and that was it. Then everyone panicked when Walmart came to town. Those few shops where DOOMED!!! It was all doom and gloom. Funny though, this little town actually thrived and grew. Now the place is booming and goes till late on weekends. You have a hard time finding parking a lot of times. The place………………….Paso Robles.